humans have an animal-like or corrupt nature—by offering the example of Sparta, the Ancient Greek city-state. The people of Sparta were said to have rigorous, immaterialistic ideals, and Holberg wrote that Sparta was strong because of this system of virtue: "She was free from internal unrest because there was no material wealth to give rise to quarrels. She was respected and honored for her impartiality and justice. She achieved dominion over the other Greeks simply because she rejected dominion." Jean-Jacques Rousseau commented on the Fable in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754): Mandeville sensed very well that even with all their morality men would never have been anything but monsters if nature had not given them pity in support of reason; but he did not see that from this quality alone flow all the social virtues he wants to question in men. In fact, what are generosity, clemency, humanity, if not pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, to the human species in general?Mandeville sees greed as “beneficial to the public” and he denies men of all social virtues. It is on this latter point that Rousseau counters Mandeville. Despite some overlap between Rousseau's work on self-reliance and Mandeville’s ideas, Rousseau identifies that virtues are applications of natural pity: “for is desiring that someone not suffer anything other than desiring to be happy?” Rousseau attacked Mandeville in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men primarily because Mandeville denies man of possessing social virtues. Rousseau counters Mandeville using an admission of Mandeville’s as the basis of his argument. Mandeville admitted that nature provided man with pity. Rousseau uses this admission to point out how clemency, generosity, and humanity are applications of human pity applied. Hence, since Mandeville admits to the existence of pity within humanity he must admit to the existence of, in the least, these virtues of clemency, generosity, and humanity. Rousseau seals the point when he furthers it saying: “Benevolence and friendship are, properly understood, products of a constant pity focused on a particular object: For is desiring that someone not suffer anything other than desiring that he be happy?” Rousseau identifies that Mandeville’s admittance of pity within humanity must also be an admittance to man possessing altruism. In the 19th century, Leslie Stephen, writing for the Dictionary of National Biography reported that "Mandeville gave great offense by